Rationale for routine collection of patient reported outcomes during integrative medicine consultation visits

Integrative medicine (IM) is whole-person care utilizing complementary health approaches to address numerous physical or emotional influences that can impact an individual's health. Patient-reported outcomes (PRO) are subjective measures that quantify patients' perception of their quality of life. While PRO measures have been routinely assessed in specific oncology clinics, our objective was to assess the ability and utility of routine collection of PRO measures in an IM clinic.

Patients receiving a clinical consultation in an ambulatory IM clinic completed the PROMIS Global Health Form in the clinic waiting room.

From November 2013 through October 2016, the PROMIS Global Health Form (PROMIS-10) was administered during 59% of IM provider consultation visits (7172/12,207), representing 3473 unique patients. Most patients were female (81%), White (93%), middle-aged (49.2; SD 15.4) and had commercial health insurance (66%). Baseline Mental (44.9; SD 9.1) and Physical Health (44.2; SD 8.6) scores were roughly 0.5 standard deviation below the national mean values (50; SD 10). Factors such as age, race and non-commercial insurance were associated with lower PROMIS-10 scores. Patients completing at least two PROMIS-10 questionnaires (n = 1541) exhibited increases of 2.3% and 2.8% from first to last PROMIS-10 assessment in Mental and Physical Heath scores respectively.

It is possible to routinely collect PRO measures in large IM clinic and longitudinal improvements in Mental and Physical Health scores were observed. Future research should focus on understanding how providers can utilize PRO results in real-time to improve patients' clinical outcomes and potentially decrease healthcare utilization.